The 10 Absolute Worst Things About Living With Roommates

“Hey dude, sorry to bother you about this for the hundredth time, but…” “What, did I forget to pay you for cable this month? Dammit, I’ll cut you a check tomorrow.” “Uh, well, yeah, that too, but you also forgot to FLUSH YOUR SHIT AGAIN.”

Dating back to my freshman year of college, I’ve been down every roommate road one can imagine. Shared a dorm room, lived in a frat house, spent a few years off-campus, moved even further off-campus once I graduated, and then I eventually uprooted myself to a swanky 250-square-foot box in NYC. Place was so small I felt like I was invading my own space. But throughout it all, I’ve had roommates. It’s been a real bonanza, but last week it came to an end.

It would be effortless for me to sit here and list all the things I’m going to miss about living with my best friends. We endured countless nights of drunken buffoonery together and recalling each is an impossibility, although the misadventures known simply as the “Valentine’s Day Massacre” of 2008 and the “Fuck My Pussy” incident of ’04 seem to stick out in my mind right now. Anyway, it’s truly been an adventure to cherish and maybe someday I’ll do it again. You never know. Midlife crises can hurl a mother fucker into a beautiful spiral of regression, so I refuse to rule anything out.

That said, I hate goodbyes. So rather than reminisce in the glory, I’m going to do the complete opposite of that. I’ve loved these last 10 years, and the bastards involved, but at times, shit got frustrating. As I came to learn, people are hard to live with. They’re a lot like clubbed feet in that way.

Here are the 10 worst things about living with a roommate.

The “Someone Else Will Do It” Syndrome
When you have roommates nothing is too small to ignore. Who will complete even the most negligible domestic task becomes the ultimate battle of attrition. You’ll try to schedule or plan days to clean the place together but that shit never happens. Eventually dirt and grime set in because no one wants to clean alone. Doing that only leads to bitterness… and an unsanitary apartment. So instead, you become a professional “trash placer.” No garbage can is ever too full. Even if it takes you twice as long to carefully place a piece of garbage on top of an already monstrous heap of trash—rather than actually taking the garbage out — you’ll do it. Because tomorrow you’re going away for the weekend and someone else will definitely do it by the time you get back. Only they don’t.

Other People’s Shit
It amazes me how lax I can be when it comes to my own shit. I leave 100 dishes in the sink? Fuck it, I’ll tend to that later. Beer bottles all over the coffee tables? Don’t be such a child, “Silver Spoons” is on. Meanwhile, if my roommate pulls the same exact shit, I’m dying to slap the filthy hoe who raised him.

Food Stealing
It’s just THE WORST when your shitdick roommate runs out of condiments or eats your last slice of bread. Go and ask any of my former roommates, they’ll tell you. (Yeah, this one’s admittedly a double-edged sword.)

Late Night Annoyances
Put this in the “things you only care about if you’re the victim” pile. This doesn’t (and shouldn’t) apply to college AT ALL but when you‘ve got to wake up at 7 a.m. for work, it sucks to get woken up at 4 a.m. by drunken stupidity. And it’s worse if that stupidity is your buddy fucking a girl who is screaming the entire time like her twat caught fire. Shit like that is tough to ignore. Especially after you’ve already worked up a rigorous boner.

Girlfriends
Chalk them up as the absolute worst guest to set foot in your home. They’re always around, they treat the place as if it’s their own, and yet, some don’t lift a single fucking finger to help with anything. Case in point: I lived with a good friend in Miami who at the time had a serious girlfriend. Our house was closer to her job than her own place, so she practically lived with us. She shed worse than a dog, she kept her tampons under the bathroom sink, and she was ALWAYS around doing things like talking to me and touching the remote control. This would be fine, I suppose, but without fail, every time we’d start to clean the house she would leave and go to her own apartment. She was out the door faster that I could unwrap the cord to the vacuum. She should have been on her hands and knees begging, “Master, Jason, can I please remove the urine ring on your toilet bowl?” Of course, I’d have said “That’s not necessary, Sarah” because her hands will never go near my throne, but the sentiment would have been nice.